There is a continuing need for relatively inexpensive, high performance permanent magnet materials. For example, in the automotive vehicle industry there is a particular need for such permanent magnet materials, having relatively high curie temperatures Tc (>300° C.), in traction motors, generators, and other applications.
Iron-nickel alloys are believed to offer permanent magnet properties providing they can be formed in the tetragonal L10 crystal structure. There is a need to form very small particles of compositions of elemental iron and nickel that may be consolidated into unitary shapes to serve as permanent magnets. Iron (atomic number 26) and nickel (atomic number 28) are similarly-sized transition element atoms. A molten mixture of elemental iron and nickel may be solidified as a face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure with the iron and nickel atoms in a disordered arrangement. But the disordered fcc crystal structure of iron and nickel atoms does not provide the magnetic anisotropy that is necessary for permanent magnet properties. There is a need for a method by which iron and nickel atoms may be formed into nanometer size particles of iron-nickel alloys in which the iron and nickel atoms are arranged in layers such that the resulting crystals are not cubic, but tetragonal and in the L10-type AuCu 1 crystal structure to provide magnetic anisotropy.